"Hi motus animorum, atque haec certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt."
So long as the Bible is read and the Prayer-book used, they will impress on the people the doctrines which they embody; and the Essayists and Reviewers and Dr. Colenso will labor so entirely in vain to pervert them, that no court at all will be necessary to punish the propagators of false doctrines. At all events, it may fairly be presumed that the threats about a free church are worth just as much, and no more, as the threats about secession.
But our immediate subject is the course of the controversy about the Anglican establishment. Some expressions in Dr. Pusey's preface, in which he said that some Catholics "seemed to be in an ecstasy at this victory of Satan" (the decision of the Privy Council as to the "Essays and Reviews") appear to have suggested attacks on Dr. Manning with reference to his "Crown in Council," in which he was said to have rejoiced in the troubles of his former friends, and to be merry over the miseries of the Church of England. The same kind of charge has often been made against Catholics, especially converts; and it is in the nature of things that it should be made. Every "trouble" in the Church of England of the kind of which we are speaking, while it weakens it as a teacher of fragments of Catholic truth, weakens also its hold on the minds of many who have hitherto been in the habit of making it the object of that allegiance and that obedience which the instincts of every Christian heart urge it to pay to the one mother of the children of God. So far, therefore, as the Gorham case or the Denison case, or the question of the "Essays and Reviews" and the Colenso decision, tend to expose the true and simply human character of the institution that calls itself the Church of England, so far, many good and loyal souls are set free from a delusion, and their affections transferred to their right and legitimate object. This, in the case of individuals, is a matter of rejoicing. On the other hand, on the grounds stated so clearly by Dr. Newman, it is no matter of rejoicing that a body which has to teach so large a number of baptized souls all that they will ever know of Catholic truth should have the truths that it yet retains diminished in number and in certainty, and should lose all power of preserving them from corruption.
Dr. Manning's letter to Dr. Pusey contains a clear and calm statement of the doctrines on which the feelings of Catholics toward bodies like the Church of England are based. Dr. Pusey had declared that he knew that "a very earnest body of Roman Catholics rejoice in all the workings of God the Holy Ghost in the Church of England," and had contrasted them with others who are in "ecstasy at the victory of Satan." It became necessary therefore to state in what sense a Catholic can admit that the Holy Ghost works in the Church of England. No Catholic, then, by denying utterly and entirely anything like the character of a church to the Church of England, denies thereby the workings of the Holy Ghost or the operations of grace among those who are its members; nor when these operations are affirmed and rejoiced in is any affirmation thereby made that the Church of England is in any sense whatever a church at all. Dr. Manning states in full the reasons why we affirm the workings of the Holy Ghost among the English people; and these parts of his pamphlet—indeed, the whole of it—are extremely valuable, as a clear statement of truths which it is very difficult to get Englishmen generally to understand, on account of their prevalent ignorance or misconception of the doctrine of grace. The truths in question, we need hardly say, enable Catholics to rejoice heartily in the effects of grace among the Dissenters, not less than among Anglicans. Dr. Manning has a few pages also on the specific truths that have been preserved by Anglicanism, and the fear with which he regards the process of undermining the Christianity of England which is going on. He also explains how naturally he rejoices at conversions, which are to him the bringing of souls from the imperfect to the perfect knowledge of the truth; and sums up by an argument to prove that the Anglican establishment, instead of being, as Dr. Pusey had called it, "the great bulwark against infidelity in this land," is in reality responsible for that infidelity; as having been the source of the present spiritual anarchy in England; as having weakened even those truths which it retains by detaching them from others and from the divine voice of the Church, which is the guarantee of their immortality; and as being a source of unbelief by the denial of the truths it has rejected and also of the perpetual and ever-present assistance of the Holy Ghost to preserve the Church from error. We may add, having quoted Dr. Newman on the subject of Anglican orders, that Dr. Manning speaks with equal clearness as to their entire invalidity.
Dr. Pusey's controversial appearances are generally rather late in the day: the method of his mind is inductive, and he rejoices above all things in the accumulation of a vast amount of materials, which he does not always succeed in clearly arranging or lucidly epitomizing. He has taken a year to answer Dr. Manning's short pamphlet of less than fifty pages, or rather a part of it. The volume teems with undigested learning; and a very large share of it is taken up with a long postscript and a set of notes. It will not be our business at present to do more than state concisely in what the answer to Dr. Manning consists, and endeavor to draw out from the pages of Dr. Pusey what his idea is of the Anglican Church, and what his own position in her.
There is nothing in direct answer to Dr. Manning's explanation of the doctrine as to the working of the Holy Ghost outside the visible Church—an explanation which of course places the Anglican Church on the same ground with the Dissenting sects. The satisfactory answer to this would of course be some proof that the Anglicans have orders and sacraments, and that grace is given through them, not merely to the dispositions of the individual who receives it. Dr. Pusey, of coarse, maintains the [{536}] validity of Anglican orders, but he adds nothing to the controversy, except the remark that the form of consecration used in the case of Parker was taken from that used in the case of Chichele a century before. As the controversy does not turn solely upon the form used in Parker's consecration, the fact adduced by Dr. Pusey has little to do with it. [Footnote 74]
[Footnote 74: Practically speaking, it is surely a matter of surprise that so few Anglicans should have interested themselves in ascertaining what is thought about their orders by others than themselves. No portion of the Catholic Church (as they consider it) has ever been persuaded to acknowledge them in any way. It is of course their business to obtain their acceptance, not ours to disprove them; all the more, as so very large a number of those who have borne these orders have never believed in their sacramental character. Dr. Pusey says (p. 278), "I do not believe that God maintains the faith where there is not the reality." He is speaking directly of the real presence. By how large a proportion of the bishops and clergy and laity of the Church of England since the Reformation has it been believed, even with all the force of the old Catholic traditions to maintain it? And as to the priesthood and its correlative, the sacrifice, a strong argument, on Dr. Pusey's own ground, against their existence in Anglicanism, might be found in the fact that all practical belief in them has so completely died out in the mass of the people. If there had been the reality, there would have been the faith; and so it is with Eastern heretics and schismatics.]
With regard to the other point, it is of course impossible, or very difficult, to prove the connection between the effect of a supposed means of grace and that supposed means itself, independent of the subjective dispositions and belief of the recipient. Dr. Pusey has no proofs which would not equally show that any one who thought himself a priest was one, and that any one who thought he received a sacrament from him would receive it. But the statement of Dr. Manning on which Dr. Pusey fastens more particularly is that which accuses the Anglican establishment of being the "cause and spring of the prevailing unbelief." Dr. Pusey remarks first that there is plenty of unbelief everywhere. That is true; and everywhere it can be traced to some cause; the charge is, that the Reformation has produced it in England, which was free from it before. Dr. Manning's first proof—that Anglicanism rejects much Christian truth—is met by a statement of the amount of truth which both communions hold. In this part of his argument Dr. Pusey seems to us to avoid the real question at issue. Dr. Manning speaks of the formularies of the Church of England, no doubt, as well as of her practical teaching, such as it has been for the last three hundred years, and such as it is throughout the length and breadth of England at this day. But in a question as to the amount of truth with which she claims to be "the great bulwark against infidelity," it is obvious that her formularies must be judged according to the sense commonly attached to them, and according to the interpretation of them supplied by the ordinary teaching of her clergy. Every one knows that various senses have been applied to the Anglican formularies; and it was the object of the celebrated No. 90 of the "Tracts for the Times" to prove that, in some cases, it was the intention of the compilers of the articles to allow men of various schools to sign them. Still, it is going far beyond this to put forward the so-called "Catholic" interpretation of the formularies as the sense of the Church of England. It would be untrue even if we consider the matter as a simply literary question; much more is it in the highest degree unfair to put forward this interpretation in a controversy which turns upon what actually has been and is taught by her. If a foreigner—as unacquainted with the real teaching of Anglicanism as Dr. Pusey is with that of Catholicism—were to take up this book and believe what he finds in it, he would, we venture to say, derive a totally false impression of the doctrine of the English Church as it lies on the face of her formularies, and as it has always been understood and acted upon by nine-tenths of her clergy and people. He would find an assurance that she holds the three creeds, which would give him to understand that she interpreted them in the same sense as the Catholic Church. [{537}] He would learn with surprise that there is no difference between Anglicans and Catholics on justification. "There is not one statement in the elaborate chapters on justification in the Council of Trent which any of us could fail in receiving," says Dr. Pusey. He would find that Dr. Manning had quite falsely said that "the Church of England sustains a belief in two sacraments, but formally propagates unbelief in the other five." In fact, that the Church of England holds all seven to be sacraments, with only a difference in dignity. Still more to his astonishment, he would read that the Church of England does not, in particular, object to extreme unction; she "only objects to the later abuse of it," which is not the Catholic practicer—namely, the custom of not administering it except to the dying. Then, if some one told him that the Church of England has discontinued the practice altogether, and that any one would be called a simple papist who attempted to introduce it in any way, he might naturally be inclined to find fault with the treacherous guide who had so misled him. It is the same with other points. Dr. Pusey tells us that the Church of England does not deny the infallibility of general councils or of the Church. His reasoning on this last head is so good a specimen of his method, that we may dwell on it for a moment. One of the articles teaches, that as the other churches have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred —even in matters of faith. Dr. Manning sums this up, very naturally, as a statement that all churches have erred. "The article," says Dr. Pusey, "was a puzzle to me when young." He supposed, it seems, that the condemnation must have been meant to fall on doctrinal decrees. "The two clauses, being put antithetically, must correspond. On further information, I found that there were no canons of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch that were intended; then it followed—the same principle of the correspondence of the two clauses—that neither were canons of the Church of Rome spoken of. The article moreover does not say that the Church of Rome is in error in the present, but hath erred in time past."
It is strange to see so much ingenuity wasted in a hopeless cause. Dr. Pusey remembers perfectly that the attempt to put forward the interpretations for which he contends, not as the sense or teaching of the Church of England, but as a sense of her articles barely tolerated by her in certain individuals of Catholic opinions whom she wished to retain, as others, in her service, was met many years ago by an outcry such as has not been heard in our day in England, save in the case of the Catholic hierarchy. And yet he thinks it fair and just to argue as if the Church of England not only allowed such interpretations, but as if the views which they embody were her regular teaching, so that she has a right to claim that she has put forward boldly in face of the infidelity around her those portions of Christian truth to which they relate. Her people then are, and always have been, really taught that there are seven sacraments, that there is a real presence on the altar, that there is a eucharistic sacrifice, that the Church is infallible, and so on. And as he speaks of her ministers being vowed to banish and drive away strange doctrine, his position implies that any heresy which might contradict these great Catholic truths could not be permitted within her pale. And now, suppose he was taken at his word; suppose, in consequence of this so-called Eirenicon, negotiations were opened and emissaries sent from Rome to the bishops and convocation of the English Church to treat of reunion. What would be the first step of the Anglican authorities, those who really have a right to speak for their communion, and who would be backed by the great body of the clergy and laity in the country? It would certainly be to repudiate the false face put upon their teaching by Dr. Pusey, and to [{538}] declare that their Church had always been, and meant to be, thoroughly and simply Protestant on the points at issue.